Tag Archives: IT

October 13, 2015 · 8:57 AM

A Series of Firsts: How X1 Sets the Standard for the New Enterprise Search Market

by Barry Murphy

The new world of IT demands that enterprise software support varying infrastructures – traditional managed data centers, the cloud, hybrid and virtual environments.  As a result, old-school approaches that once seemed logical no longer work in today’s reality.  For example, tightly-coupled search appliances that marry hardware and software together no longer meet the requirements of enterprises that need to make distributed workers more productive no matter what kind of device they are on.  It’s a new world for enterprise search and traditional solutions will have a very hard time adapting and scaling.

X1 is ready for the IT reality of always-on, virtual, cloud, and hybrid environments and business mobility.  This is evidenced by two “firsts” that X1 is proud to announce.  First, X1 is the first search application with an app publicly available in an Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) app store.  X1 Search Mobile is available in the AirWatch marketplace.  Given the rapid move to mobile devices for work, this is no small news.  Google just announced on Friday that searching the web is now predominantly done from mobile phones.

Click to enlarge image

Click to enlarge image

It’s clear, then, that enterprise search from the mobile device is now an essential requirement for business professionals.  The mobile search app is important, but what X1 is building out is much more than that.  In order to effectively deliver enterprise search from the mobile device requires having the back-end infrastructure to support full enterprise search in virtual environments.  It also requires supporting the next-generation desktop (VDI or DaaS) where the users live. X1 has uniquely mastered such back-end infrastructure with the only desktop search (VDI or otherwise) and enterprise search solution that are VMware Ready certified.

The second “first” that X1 is proud of is the listing of X1 Rapid Discovery in the Amazon AWS Marketplace.  Again, this is no small feat – this is the first enterprise-grade search and eDiscovery application to be available in the AWS Marketplace.

AWS marketplace

Click to enlarge image

Organizations storing content in AWS can now get full-featured enterprise search and eDiscovery deployed right next to their content.  And, if these organizations store other content locally, they can deploy Rapid Discovery in their own data center as well and have a single-pane-of-glass across all information no matter where it lives.

X1 will continue to provide solutions that work in the infrastructures that organizations utilize today.  The traditional approach to search will not work, but with X1, companies will have the flexibility to deploy into any environment and give users a powerful search experience on any device.  That is a powerful productivity tool – and businesses require worker productivity the same way humans require oxygen.  It is a new enterprise search market out there and X1 is uniquely positioned to lead the charge.

1 Comment

Filed under Cloud Data, eDiscovery, Enterprise eDiscovery, Hybrid Search, Information Management

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 3, 2014 · 7:55 AM

X1 CEO Message: A New Approach to Enterprise Search Resonates

by John Patzakis

In my two and half year tenure as CEO here at X1, we have seen tremendous progress and exciting growth with our next generation search solutions: X1 Search 8 and X1 Rapid Discovery. During this time, I have taken the very valuable opportunity to listen to our end users, executive sponsors and key stakeholders in IT about their X1 experience, their input on our product roadmap, and their perspectives on broader enterprise search.

On the enterprise search front, the recurring theme we hear again and again is that outside of the data managed by X1, enterprise search is a source of major frustration for organizations. This is confirmed by survey after survey where the vast majority of respondents report dissatisfaction with their current enterprise search platform. Simply put, the traditional approach to enterprise search has not worked. This is largely because most search solutions deployed in recent years focused on IT requirements — which see search as either a technical project or a commodity —rather than being end-user driven.

At X1, however, many of our customers report real progress with enterprise search, with firm-wide X1 rollouts being major wins at their organization. We believe that X1’s unique focus on the end-user is the key. You won’t find many other business productivity search solutions where the end users drive demand, instead of the tool being imposed on the end-users by IT or systems integrators. We continually hear countless testimonials from our users, at companies large and small who swear by their X1 and cannot imagine working without it. In speaking with industry analysts and other experts in the enterprise search field, this is an almost unheard of phenomenon, where end-user satisfaction with the companies’ enterprise search platform is usually around 10-15 percent, verses the 80-85 percent satisfaction ratio we see with X1.

So in view of this customer and industry feedback, we coined the phrase “business productivity search” to differentiate what X1 focuses on verses most other enterprise search tools, which are typically re-fashioned big data analytics or web search appliances. And the feedback we’ve received on this from end-users and industry experts alike is that this assessment hits the nail on the head. Business productivity search is not big data analytics and it is not web retrieval. It is its own use case with a workflow and interface that is tailored to the end users. X1 provides the end-user with a powerful yet user-friendly and iterative means to quickly retrieve their business documents and emails using their own memory recall as opposed to generic algorithms that generate false positives and a workflow ill-suited to business productivity search.

This analysis is crystalized in the accompanying chart differentiating X1’s approach to business productivity search versus big data analytics and web search.

3_forms_table

Click image to enlarge

These points are further explained in our four page white paper: Why Enterprise Search Fails in Most Cases…and How to Fix It.   But perhaps the most compelling illustration is this testimonial from 2013 Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry and Stanford professor Dr. Michael Levitt, who states: “X1 is an intimate part of my workflow — it is essentially an extension of my mind when I engage in information retrieval, which is many times an hour during my workday.” In my opinion, you will not find that level of enthusiasm by end-users for other enterprise search platforms.

And X1 is a platform. Users need a single-pane-of-glass view to all of their information – email, files, SharePoint, archives like Symantec Enterprise Vault, and other enterprise repositories.  X1 Search 8 and our enterprise extension X1 Rapid Discovery provides just that – a user-friendly interface to all information that lets workers use their minds to find what they are looking for in an iterative search tailored by the end user.

But the hundreds of thousands of X1 end users know all this. The key takeaway for CIOs and other IT executives is that search is an inherently personal user experience, and the number one requirement, by far, for a successful search initiative is enthusiastic end-user adaptation. If the business professionals in your organization are not passionately embracing the search solution, then nothing else matters.

Leave a comment

Filed under Business Productivity Search, Enterprise Search

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 27, 2014 · 11:10 AM

The Time Has Come to Approach Search Differently

Anyone in the search / eDiscovery business lives and breathes search – we think about all day, every day because it is our livelihood.  At X1, we have many customers making real progress with enterprise search, so there can be the perception that organizations have learned to address the very real challenge of helping employees find information.  Thus, it can be surprising to run into research that shows just how bad the traditional approach to enterprise search is.

I came across the “Enterprise Search and Findability Survey 2014” on the Findwise website.  It is very interesting reading and really confirms that a new approach to enterprise search is needed.  Some of the key points, from my perspective, are;

  • Almost half of the survey respondents in large organizations (1,000 employees or more) find it difficult or very difficult to find information.
  • Almost two-thirds of respondents are either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their existing search applications.
  • Almost two-thirds of respondents believe it is very important to improve the ability to find the right information.

Simply put, traditional enterprise search did not work.  Too many employees complain about not being able to find what they are looking for.  The search solutions deployed over the last 15 years focused on IT requirements rather than end-user requirements.  These tools required end-users to tag and rate their search results, something end-users have neither the time nor the emotional investment to do.  This very point is something that Marcus Stimler, CTO of Capgemini UI, points out on the webinar we did earlier this month – the reliance of traditional search tools on end-users to tag information leads to a lack of findability.  This survey just confirms that fact.

It is not all doom and gloom, however, as many X1 customers know.  There is a better way to approach enterprise search and it begins with the end-user.  In today’s business world, end-users know what they want.  They demand good experiences with technology.   A web page with links to search results will not cut it in the enterprise.  Users need a single-pane-of-glass view to all of their information – email, files, SharePoint, archives like Symantec Enterprise Vault, and other enterprise repositories that users might access.   X1 Search 8 provides just that – a user-friendly interface to all information that lets workers use their brains to find what they are looking for.

Beyond the desktop, X1 Rapid Discovery indexes other sources of content – either on-premise or in the Cloud – and makes the information available alongside a user’s local content.  Perhaps the beauty of this approach lies mostly with its simplicity.  Workers are happy because they can find information.  IT is surprisingly happy because they have a search tool that is easily deployable, as opposed to the traditional complex science project.  This overall happiness is a result of a new approach to enterprise search starting with end-user requirements and extending outward.  It is a subtle difference, but a meaningful one that will drive the results of future findability surveys to a new level.

For more on our perspectives on why enterprise search initiatives often fail, while X1 is invariably successful, please download this short treatise. This was inspired by direct feedback from many successful X1 install sites.  In a nutshell, X1 addresses users’ personalized requirements for business productivity search.

3_forms_table

Click image to enlarge

A key mistake is to take big data or web search solutions and apply them to the very different use case of business productivity search. The matrix displayed here illustrates the key differences between these use cases.

Leave a comment

Filed under Business Productivity Search, Enterprise Search

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 10, 2014 · 8:33 AM

End-User Computing & Search Go Hand-In-Hand

webinar_works_landing

by Barry Murphy

Last week, John Patzakis here at X1 blogged about the VMworld 2014 event and how it has become the Comdex for enterprise IT.  I was at the show and it was very clear that end-users are the future of IT.  The trend has been talked about for quite some time and is commonly called the consumerization of IT.  The heat around that topic has tended to focus on devices and not as much on what is behind information access on those devices.  But, as BYOD takes off and mobility becomes increasingly important, enterprises care more and more about the flow and availability of information.  Why?  Because easy access to information is critical to the end-user acceptance of enterprise IT offerings; when users cannot quickly find what they are looking for, they reject what IT rolls out to them.  Without that end-user acceptance, there is no chance for a positive ROI on any IT project.

End-user experience is so key that VMware has named a division of its company “End User Computing.”  That EUC unit made several major acquisitions in the last year, including Airwatch and Desktone.  This is because technology providers need to win the battle with end-users.  For an example of a company that built its business on the backs of end-users and leveraged those relationships to bully its way into enterprise IT, look no further than Apple.  As VDI users have learned, it is critical to bake search requirements into virtual desktop deployments from the get-go in order to ensure an optimal user experience.  And, as Brian Katz points out in his blog, the same thing will hold true with mobile – usability will be key.  That is why we at X1 are so excited about the future.  X1’s user interface for search is second to none.  And, users actually rave about it.

In my days as an industry analyst, I rarely had technology users raving about the tools they were using.  And, I never ever had an enterprise search user tell me that their solution solved the challenge of finding information quickly.  The rabid users of X1 have been an eye opener for me.  In fact, an X1 customer recently polled its users and virtually every user said that X1 is easy to learn and use (no easy feat for a piece of enterprise software) and over 70% of users described their experience with X1 as very positive or positive.  Those numbers are unheard of in terms of technology satisfaction.

With what I’ve learned from my days as an analyst and in my time here at X1, I’ve come up with some ways to approach enterprise search in a way that is both IT and user-friendly.  We will share the knowledge in a webinar on October 9 at 1pm ET / 10am PT.  We’ve titled it, “Making Enterprise Search Actually Work by Putting User Experience First.”

In this “no-death-by-PowerPoint” webinar, attendees will not only learn, but actually see how to deploy enterprise search solutions in ways that make both end-users and IT departments happy.  This webinar will demonstrate both why and how to put end-user experience first.   Specifically, attendees will learn:

  • Why the human brain is the best analytical engine for business productivity search
  • How federation can save IT time, money, and headaches
  • How to best deploy search solutions in all IT infrastructures
  • How to achieve ROI on enterprise search in ways never seen in the past
  • That search can be like BASF – it can make many other technology deployments better, including VDI, SharePoint, and Enterprise Vault

I will be presenting on this webinar and will be joined by some special guests to be named later.  Come learn why search and end-user computing go hand-in-hand.

Register for the webinar here >

 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Enterprise Search, Hybrid Search, Information Access, Information Management

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 8, 2014 · 9:11 AM

Seeing The Full Picture On Hybrid Cloud

If it seems that a lot has been written about hybrid cloud lately, that’s because there has – it is one of the hottest topics in the technology world, if not the hottest.  hybrid cloudThe hybrid cloud is a combination of a private IT infrastructure and a public cloud.  The public and private cloud infrastructures then communicate over an encrypted connection and can port data and applications back and forth.  Hybrid cloud is hot because it delivers real benefits:  increased speed of access time and reduced latency because of an on-premise, private infrastructure that is accessible directly as opposed to through the internet; more flexibility to have on-premises infrastructure that can support the average workload and to leverage the public cloud when the workload exceeds the power of the private cloud component; and more flexibility in server designs that can lower the costs of storage.

These benefits (there are many more, but the list would be too long) have IT departments excited to leverage hybrid cloud.  As organizations gain experience with hybrid cloud, we are seeing more and more written about it.  Most of what is written focuses on the hard-core IT issues.  Industry blogs often dig deep in the ability to port applications from on-premise to the cloud and back without requiring re-architecting the apps or hitting major bumps in the workload function.  Or, they might be about the ability to migrate server workloads to the cloud.  This is clearly important stuff, but it is only painting half the picture.   No one is talking much about where the information feeding these applications lives, or about how to ensure the information is accessible as needed.

This is why we need to see the full picture on hybrid cloud.  The reality is the information will live all over the place and business workers will need unified access to it, without having to know the location.   We should be talking about hybrid search equally as much as we talk about the other issues related to hybrid cloud. This is because end-user search experience is extremely important to executing successful IT projects.  We have seen this up-close-and-in-person in the VDI market.  Many organizations rolled out virtual desktops to employees and followed the best practice of turning off Windows indexing.  When users went to search for their information, they were unable to do so and revolted.  That is a lose-lose scenario.  The solution, in that case, is X1 Search Virtual Edition – the only search solution that is architected specifically for VDI environments.

The lesson from VDI is simple:  do not forget the business workers that will need to do their jobs (which tends to require finding their important emails and files quickly and efficiently).   Products like X1 Rapid Discovery enable hybrid search that lets IT glean all the benefits of hybrid cloud while ensuring end-users are happy with their ability to find information.  If we learn from that lesson as we venture into the hybrid cloud, we can avoid the nightmares that come when users are less than thrilled with the solutions IT rolls out to them.  If we think about hybrid search now, IT departments embracing hybrid cloud can be heroes to the C-Level executives tracking performance and to the business workers they serve.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Cloud Data, Hybrid Search, Information Access, Information Governance, Information Management, Virtualized Environment

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,